Professor nets £70,000 for digital media projects

A Sheffield Hallam university professor has received a prestigious £70,000 research prize to boost a range of city-based digital media projects.

Professor David Cotterrell says the award from charity The Leverhulme Trust will enable him to develop the digital simulation projects inspired by two recent trips to war-torn Afghanistan.

Cotterrell, a professor of fine art at Sheffield Hallam, says: "This amazing award will bind together projects I have been exploring both at home and abroad.

"It is of enormous credit to the university's art and design research centre and supports the great momentum that Sheffield Hallam has built in developing its reputation for excellence in transformational digital media."

Cotterrell is one of 24 scholars to receive a share of a £1.6m cashpot from the Leverhulme Trust to explore politicised and romantic themes within digital technology.

The prize will allow Cotterrell to develop several new bodies of work, one of which will focus on the rehabilitation of returning British soldiers and work that can question received understandings of history and elicit emotional responses through synthetically mediated experiences.

Cotterrell says: "My work tries to break the limits of our empathy with abstracted experiences. On my second trip to Afghanistan I moved freely as a civilian to explore beautiful landscapes now associated with military advantage and fear.

"My experiences in Afghanistan were transformative, working within an environment far beyond my normal context.

"With this award, I hope to develop my work with immersive environments, applying new techniques to an expanding visual vocabulary to explore the possibilities of invoking sublime experiences within simulated worlds."

Over the last ten years, Cotterrell’s work has been extensively commissioned and exhibited in North America, Europe and the Far East, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm.
Professor Simeon Yates, head of the Cultural, Communications and Computing Research Institute (C3RI) at Sheffield Hallam says: "We are delighted that David has received this prize which acknowledges his reputation as one of the country's leading installation artists.
"His new research project will once again illustrate the excellent work being carried out by C3RI in art, design, communication and technology."